I'm more of a "lets see what other people went through" type of cautious person. I certainly don't want to screw myself over. The advice of this board has been pretty valuable so far.
If this was your first credit card, go ahead and leave the account open. You want to have a solid payment history on file and leaving it active will keep your total credit line up, which is a good thing. Also, be careful with those balance transfer deals. Most CC companies get people by offering 0% APR on balance transfer, but a regular APR for purchases. All your payments apply to your lowest APR first, so let's say if you transfer $1000 in, you'll be paying that off with your monthly payments while your purchases are getting charged at the normal APR until you pay off the balance transfer. My recommendation (this is what I did for a family member): Open the new card, transfer your existing balance to that. Pay the minimum on that each month until the 0% APR runs out. Then use your existing cards to make purchases, but pay those off in full each month. Hope this helped.
they take into account your debt to credit ratio. the smaller it is, the better your score. for instance, if he has 5 cards with a total of credit line of $10,000 and owes $2000, that's a ratio of debt to credit of 2000/10,000 = 20%. but if has 3 cards with a total credit line of $4,000 and still only owes $2000, that's a debt to credit ratio of 2,000/4,000 = 50%. the 20% looks much better.
